Recommendation: Don't use GenericName field in .desktop

[chinnybob]

Steam creates .desktop files for each game you installed, but it always sets the GenericName entry to "Steam Game". This makes no sense. The purpose of this field is to allow programs with silly names eg "GIMP" to show up in menus as "Image Editor". This makes sense for image editors and web browsers where they are all largely interchangable and most people will only have one installed, and won't care which one it actually is.

It doesn't make sense for Steam to do what it does because most people will have multiple games installed and showing a menu that has 5 entries that all say "Steam Game" is not useful or helpful.

So I recommend that Steam leaves the GenericName field blank, so that the Name field (which is the full name of the game) is used instead.

[ThOR27]

+1

[Thaodan]

Or better store the description of the game in 'GenericName'

[johndrinkwater [🐧︀ 🎮]]

Isn’t this more of a bug than a feature request if its displaying the wrong name for games in the launcher/menu?

[chinnybob]

Originally posted by Thaodan:

Or better store the description of the game in 'GenericName'

The Comment field would be better suited to this. (Currently set to "Play this game" for all games.)

[elgregor]

+1

[Paul N. Maxwell]

+1

[johndrinkwater [🐧︀ 🎮]]

chinnybob, does GenericName show in any specific launchers? Could you provide screenshots at all? I’m just going through looking for issues to bump onto github.

[chinnybob]

Generic name shows in XFCE if you have the appropriate option set. I'm pretty sure gnome panel has this option too. I can provide screenshots but I have no idea at all how to post them on this (I can post them to github easily though.)

[johndrinkwater [🐧︀ 🎮]]

On github would be great :)

[chinnybob]

Done.

[lucidfox]

I think GenericName should remain empty for Steam games, and Comment, indeed, should be set to the game description.

KDE also has this problem. It displays GenericName first, prominently, and the application name second, greyed out, e.g.

Document Viewer
Okular

For Steam games, it would thus display as:

Steam Game
Team Fortress 2

Not very intuitive when quickly scanning the list of a dozen or two applications in the menu.

[johndrinkwater [🐧︀ 🎮]]

@lucidfox and that behaviour is coming in the next client update, GenericName wont be set :)